Date/time - 19 Feb 2014. 5-6.30 pm.Seminar title - Internationalization of the University as a Response to Globalization: An East Asian PerspectiveSpeaker - Professor Akiyoshi Yonezawa, University of Nagoya Graduate School of International DevelopmentVenue - ED 2.04Convenor - Terri Kim

Date/time - 20 May 2014. 5-6.30 pm.Seminar title - International Trends in University Governance: the 'modernisation' process and its outcomesSpeaker - Professor Mike Shattock, Visiting Professor of the Institute of Education, Founder of the MBA in HE Management, former Registrar of the University of WarwickVenue - ED 2.04Convenor - Terri Kim

Date/time - 15 April 2015. 1-2 pmSeminar title - Competing ideas of universities : the consequences of the migration of intellectuals from Austria and Germany to the United States in the 1930sSpeaker - Prof. Derek Robbins, UELVenue - Stratford, Cass ED2.04Convenor - Terri Kim

Speaker: Patrick Ainley (Professor of Training and Education at the University of Greenwich School of Education)

Abstract:
This seminar is little concerned with the contents of the 1963 Robbins Report on Higher Education but places its main recommendation in a wider political context to see it as initiating a period of reform aimed at changing society through education. This period has now been closed by the 2010 Browne Review of Higher Education and subsequent White Paper. It is reviewed to explain the extraordinary current situation in which schools, colleges and universities now find themselves in an attempted reversal of the widening participation to mass higher education recently rolled out to nearly half of all 18+ year olds towards a minority HE with academic schooling dominant throughout the system. In a still greater reversal, the expansion of state over private provision characteristic of the 50 year period of reform, is also being reversed at all levels of learning towards a state-subsidised privatisation. In conclusion some alternatives are suggested.

Speaker: William Locke, Reader in Higher Education Studies and Co-Director, Centre for Higher Education Studies (CHES), Institute of Education, University of London

Abstract:
Rankings and online comparison sites have both facilitated and shaped the marketization of higher education in England, the UK as a whole and elsewhere. They have facilitated marketization by introducing greater competition between and within higher education institutions. Ultimately, they accomplish the transformation of qualities into quantities, which is both required by, and a consequence of, the commodification and privatisation of higher education. Rankings have also helped to embed the logic of the market within organizational structures and processes and within the minds and practices of organizational members. In some ways, in a highly regulated UK higher education market, rankings became a substitute for more authentic market mechanisms. However, these processes have intensified with the transfer (in England) of the majority of the cost of study to students and the emergence of more sophisticated web sites presenting detailed statistics that enable prospective students to compare courses and institutions on indicators such as modes of student assessment and employment outcomes. This article seeks to understand how different types of university and college are responding to this intensification of rankings logic amidst the further marketization of higher education in the UK. It employs the concepts of internalization and institutionalization to analyse how these responses evolve and vary between institutions at different places in the rankings but eschews a completely Foucauldian interpretation which, in the author’s view, cannot fully explain the responses within institutions (and over time) to data-driven technologies.

Bio:William Locke is Reader in Higher Education Studies and Co-Director (with Professor Sir Peter Scott) of the Centre for Higher Education Studies (CHES) at the Institute of Education, University of London. He is also Co-Director of the MBA in Higher Education Management, the first of its kind in Europe, established in 2002.

William was formerly Head of Learning and Teaching policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), leading policy on quality, the provision of information, funding for teaching, the control of student numbers and teacher education. Previously, he was Assistant Director of the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI) at the Open University and Deputy Director of Policy Development at Universities UK (UUK). In these roles, he has commissioned and undertaken a range of research and advocated a research-informed approach to policy analysis, development and implementation, which has had direct influence on both UUK and HEFCE, but also the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and other sector bodies, such as the Higher Education Academy and the Quality Assurance Agency.

His research interests include the governance and management of higher education institutions; the changing academic profession; higher education policy and policy-making; the impact of marketisation (including league tables and other forms of ranking) on higher education institutions and systems; and conceptions of teaching, learning and students. While at CHERI, he lead the UK part of an International study of the Changing Academic Profession. He is co-ordinating editor of Changing Governance and Management in Higher Education: The Perspectives of the Academy, which was awarded Best Comparative Higher Education Book in 2011 by the U.S. Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Higher Education Special Interest Group. He has a wide range of other publications, including journal articles, book chapters and policy reports and has given keynote presentations at international conferences in North America, Japan, China, Australia and throughout Europe.

He is a member of the Governing Council and the Governance and Appointments Committee of the Society for Research into Higher Education and the Quality Assurance Agency's Research Advisory Group.

19th February 2014, 5-6 pm. ED2.04

Seminar Title: ‘Internationalization of the University as a Response to Globalization: An East Asian Perspective’

AbstractIn the 20th Century, we observed an expansion of higher education systems, first as tools for colonization and then for de-colonization. Global and regional collaboration in higher education has been strongly linked to the emergence of new nation-states, the rapid progress of internationalization, and the emergence of regional dimensions of higher education under globalization since the end of the 20th Century. At the same time, the development of a knowledge economy transformed the nature of higher education into a tradable service as well as a platform for skill formation, which made knowledge workers mobile across borders. In this chapter, the author analyzes the past events, current trends, and future prospects of global and regional collaboration in higher education linked with the emergence of international dimensions.

BioDr. Akiyoshi Yonezawa is an associate professor at the Graduate School of International Development (GSID), Nagoya University. With sociological background, he is mainly researching on the comparative higher education policies. Before moving to Nagoya University, he has worked at National Institution for Tohoku University, Academic Degrees and University Evaluation (NIAD-UE), Hiroshima University, OECD and Tokyo University. He is currently serving as expert committee member of Central Council of Education, Ministry of Education (MEXT), Japan.

13 March 2014, 1-2 pm., ED 2.04

Seminar Title: Interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary teaching and research

Speaker: Professor John Taylor (Professor of Higher Education Management and Special Adviser to the Vice-Chancellor, University of Liverpool)

AbstractMost universities claim to be centres for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research, often in very extravagant terms. Increasingly, funding bodies are looking for projects to show evidence of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research. In teaching, new disciplines are emerging, often at the interface of two or more better established disciplines; environmental studies and cultural studies are just two examples. This paper examines how universities are coping (or not coping) with the challenge such developments pose to traditional management structures. The paper is based on three separate research projects, covering 8 different universities in the UK, US, Sweden and Finland, and looks at how universities can foster interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary teaching and research and discusses the characteristics of staff working in these areas.

BioJohn Taylor is a historian by background. He worked for over 20 years in higher education management before moving into an academic career, first at Bath, then at Southampton and now at Liverpool where he has worked since 2010. He has a broad range of interests, including strategy and organisation, the management of research, the management of change, internationalisation and the history of higher education. In all these areas, he is especially interested in international comparative studies, and he has undertaken research in over 20 different countries in the course of his career. Outside of work, he enjoys football and cricket, and taking his German Shepherd, Ellie, for long walks in the Wiltshire countryside.

24 April 2014, 5-6 pm., ED 2.04

Seminar Title: 'All change! Slow Change or No Change? The future of English higher education'

AbstractAfter two decades of comparative stability English higher education has been hit by a whirlwind of reforms - notably, of course, the introduction of much higher fees and, most recently, the decision to remove any cap on student numbers. As a result of this tilt towards the market the impact of the National Student Survey, turbocharged by league tables, has intensified. New private providers, some for-profit, have been given degree awarding powers, eroding the effective monopoly wielded by public universities and colleges. The advance of new learning technologies has also accelerated, as MOOCs (massive open online courses) have burst onto the scene.

But making sense of these changes is not straightforward. According to one account English higher education is undergoing a paradigm shift, from a managed system of public institutions to a dynamic market of more flexible forms of provision.. But others dispute this account. They argue that after an interlude of turbulence English higher education will regain its equilibrium as institutions learn to cope with the new high-fees funding regime. Others again argue that, far from promoting greater dynamism, these reforms will lead to the even greater entrenchment of the traditional hierarchy of institutions (and forms of delivery). Finally big questions have been asked about the financial sustainability of the new regime, as calculations of the continuing degree of public subsidy increase. With a general election only a year away uncertainties proliferate.

BioPeter Scott is Professor of Higher Education Studies at the Institute of Education University of London and Chair of the Council of the University of Gloucestershire. From 1998 until 2010 he was Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University. He was a member of the board of the Higher Education Funding Council for England from 2000 until 2006 and chaired two of HEFCE's strategic committees. His most recent book is (jointly with Claire Callender) 'Browne and Beyond: the reform of English Higher Education'.